Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire isn’t the kind of movie that sits back and waits for you to fall in love with it. It doesn’t give you the chance to refuse. From the opening minutes, it washes over you, sucks you in, and spins you through a whirlwind of colors and sounds and emotions. It’s a movie that is completely, gloriously alive.

The movie centers on Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), an Indian teenager who’s poised to win 20,000,000 rupees in his country’s version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The movie opens with him kidnapped and tortured by police who want to know who’s feeding Jamal the answers. Doctors and lawyers don’t even win the way he has; how could a kid from the streets possibly know all of this? The rest of the movie unfolds around that question, as Jamal explains through flashbacks and memories how every moment of his life has brought him here.

It’s a joy to watch, but that doesn’t mean it’s an entirely joyful movie; parts of Jamal’s story are downright painful, in the same way that watching The Wire makes me ache inside. But Slumdog never falls too deeply into heartbreak. Mirroring the path of its protagonist’s life, every moment is another brick building to a perfect conclusion. For the rest of my thoughts, just

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